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The Museum’s Collections document the fate of Holocaust victims, survivors, rescuers, liberators, and others through artifacts, documents, photos, films, books, personal stories, and more. Search below to view digital records and find material that you can access at our library and at the Shapell Center.

The interview with Renee Barr was conducted on November 12, 1983 as part of the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington's oral history project to document Washington, DC area survivor's experiences of the Holocaust. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received the interview on May 26, 1993.

Also in Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington oral history collection

Kenneth Adler (né Kurt Paul Adler), born on September 20, 1922 in Karlsruhe, Germany, describes his parents; his father, who was a physician, and his mother, who was a lab assistant; the non-fraternization decree in 1934; experiencing antisemitism; belonging to a Zionist youth group; his parents applying for visas to the US in 1936; going to Trent College in Derbyshire, England, where he was the only Jewish student; the attempts made to convert him to Christianity; his older sister living in London, England; his parents and sister immigrating to the US in December 1938; living in New York, NY; attending City College at night; attending school at the University of the South in Sewanee, TN for a year and feeling like an outsider; joining the US Army in 1943 and changing his first name to Kenneth; being a radio operator in France, Belgium, Holland, and Germany; working for the military government from 1945 to 1946; experiencing antisemitism; earning a degree in journalism from Syracuse University and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago; teaching; working for the BBC in Ottawa; working for USIA until 1987; meeting his wife in 1942 at a Jewish refugee club at the YMHA; his three children; visiting Karlsruhe in October 1988 for a reunion; and his fears of being rejected.

Hans Julius Cahnmann, born on January 27, 1906 in Munich, Germany, describes joining the Pathfinders Youth Movement after the Russian Revolution; graduating from Gymnasium in 1924; studying pharmacy for two years then going to Berlin for an apprenticeship; earning his master’s degree and Ph.D. in pharmacy in 1930; becoming a licensed food chemist; working in the university lab of Marc Tiffeneau in Paris, France from 1933 to 1936; working for a pharmaceutical company headed by Paul Weill and Lucien Picard; applying to the United States for a visa in 1939; being sent with other foreign-born Jews to a collection center in the stadium in May 1940; being transported to a camp near Tours, France; going to Montauban; waiting in Marseilles, France for his US visa with help from Varian Fry and the International Rescue Committee; boarding the ship Wyoming in Portugal and going to Casablanca, Morocco; being in the desert for two months; arriving in New York, NY on august 6, 1941; working at Mount Sinai Hospital from May 1942 to 1944; his work synthesizing vitamin A; working at National Institutes of Health (NIH); and his wife’s experiences and her arrival in New York in 1938.

Ruth Ephraim (née Wyzanski), born on February 19, 1931 in Hamburg, Germany, describes being the youngest of five girls; her Polish parents; attending a Jewish school in 1937 and its closing; the round ups, during which her father hid in a closet; her family staying with German Jewish friends for four days in a cellar; her mother being detained briefly in a police station; her sister Eva going on a Kindertransport to England in 1938; her family taking a three day cargo trip to England; living with her parents and siblings in one room and getting clothes from the Jewish Welfare Society; evacuating with her two sisters to Bedfordshire in early 1941; returning to London in mid-1941 during the Blitz; staying in shelters in the backyard and in the subway; the bombing of her grandparents’ house; getting furniture from Germany; her father working at Grove Lane Synagogue; staying in London after 1945 and attending art college; moving to the United States in 1960; getting married in 1966 to another Holocaust survivor; and how her fear from her war experiences has stayed with her.

Morton Gerson (Motel Herson), born on July 28, 1908 in Zamosc, Poland, describes his family moving to Ukraine in 1914 and living in Kiev; experiencing antisemitism during the Revolution in 1917; his family’s return to Zamosc in 1918; becoming a store clerk; getting married to Paula Szajd in 1937; the birth of his son in July 1939; the German bombings beginning September 1, 1939; avoiding the roundups of Jewish men and escaping to Vlodzinersh; his wife and child joining him; going to L'viv, Ukraine in December 1939; the death of his son; going by cattle car for three weeks to the Ural Mountains then Sverdlovskaia oblast'; working in the woods and surviving on little food; living in one room with eight people; his wife sewing uniforms; going by railroad car to Uzbekistan, passing through Tashkent to Samarkand; working as a watchman for grain; hearing in 1944 that his wife’s family and his parents were sent to Belzec concentration camp; returning to Poland after the war ended; the birth of his second son in June 1946; receiving Russian passports and amnesty; going to Upper Silesia; being taken to Prague, Czech Republic by the Haganah then Vienna, Austria; living in the Entz displaced persons (DP) camp in 1948; the birth of another son in Föhrenwald DP camp; his family immigrating to the United states in 1950; and opening a dress store in New York, NY.

Paula Gerson (Pesha Szajd), born on May 10, 1910 in Zamosc, Poland, describes learning to be a dressmaker in 1925; going to Warsaw, Poland to work for a dressmaker; going in 1930 to design school run by the ORT; getting married to Morton Gerson in August 1937; the birth of her son in July 1939; the bombing of Zamosc in September 1939; her husband’s escape and joining him in October 1939; going to L'viv, Ukraine in December 1939; the death of her son in 1940; going by cattle car to the Ural Mountains and her work as a seamstress there; going by railroad car to Uzbekistan and working illegally to avoid taxes; going in June 1946 to Linz, Austria; having another son; living in a displaced persons (DP) camp in Austria; learning that her parents did not survive; going to Föhrenwald DP camp, where she had another son; immigrating to the United states in 1950 and settling in New York, NY; and her present thoughts about the war.

Fritz Gluckstein, born January 24, 1927 in Berlin, Germany, describes being the son of a Jewish father (Georg) and a Christian mother (Hedwig); his father serving as a district judge and his dismissal after the rise of the Nazis; his father’s work for the Jewish community, working as a legal advisor; being considered a protected Mischlinge; his family surviving WWII in Berlin, owing in part to his mother’s sister (Elfriede Dressler), who helped look after Fritz and provided the family with extra food; being forced to move to the neighborhood around the Oranienburgerstrasse synagogue; the bombing of their apartment; seeking shelter in the Jewish hospital; working on a demolition and clean-up crew; being assigned to work at Eichmann’s Gestapo headquarters along with other Mischlinge; being supervised by Lieutenant Ernst Henning von Hardenberg, who was sympathetic; being conscripted with his father in the fall of 1944 into a labor battalion; demolishing partly-destroyed buildings and clearing rubble; building defensive barriers around the city to slow the Soviet advance; remaining in Berlin after liberation; immigrating alone to the United States; and studying veterinary medicine.

Ethel Kaplan (nee Etie Bronsztien), born June 15, 1920 in Kolki, Poland (possibly now in Ukraine), describes her father dying in 1925; her mother running an oil factory; attending Polish public schools then school in Rivne, Ukraine; the Russian occupation from 1939 to 1941 and the confiscation of Jewish businesses; having to work for the Russians; leaving Kolki with others in June 1941 and sleeping in barns and train stations as they headed east; being sent by the Russians to a collective farm in Xilla; making parts for guns; getting sores from malnutrition; going to a town near Tashkent, Uzbekistan in 1943 and the diversity of residence there; returning to Kolki in 1944 and learning the fate of her family; going to Lódz, Poland in late 1944; getting married in May 1945; having a business; the birth of her daughter in 1946; going to Berlin, Germany and staying in a displaced persons camp for a year; living in Kassel, Germany; receiving help from HIAS to immigrate to the United States in 1949; and settling in Washington, DC.

Helena Manaster, born on May 29, 1917 in Lesko, Poland, describes the Russian influence in the area after October 1939; her father losing his business and the family moving to L'viv, Ukraine; doing secretarial work in a Russian office; getting married to a medical student, Norbert Ramer, on September 22, 1940; sitting in a bunker for eight days with her family once the war began in Ukraine in June 1941; the creation of a ghetto in November 1941; her husband being employed by the Germans to fight typhus in Orelec, Poland and accompanying him there; living with Jewish peasants in Orelec; going to Olszanica with 120 other Jews and being released with her husband shortly before the 120 Jews were killed between Olszianica and Ustianowa; returning to Lesko; the first Aktion in the ghetto in July 1942; hiding during the Aktions; going with her husband to Radymno labor camp, where her husband worked as a doctor; the project finishing and getting false ID papers with the name Dobrowolska; being pregnant at the time; passing as non-Jews and going to Sosnica then Przemysl and Krakow to the homes of Polish friends; receiving help from the underground movement; staying in different places every night, separated from her husband for safety; working in the kitchen in a Capuchin monastery, pretending to be the wife of a Polish officer; the birth of her son Tadeusz on October 6, 1943; adopting another infant in November 1943; the baptism of her son; leaving the monastery in June 1944; getting an apartment with her husband in the winter of 1944-1945; the end of the war and hearing that her brother survived; staying in Warsaw, Poland for 10 years and having three more children; going to Vienna, Austria; going to Chicago, IL in December 1968 while her husband stayed in Poland; immigrating to Israel in 1982; and returning to the US in 1988.

Rachelle Selzer, born on November 4, 1923 in Czernowitz, Rumania (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine), describes her family moving to Bucharest, Romania in 1933; witnessing Jews being beaten; attending a Catholic school since public schools were not safe for Jews; her family fleeing to Paris, France in 1938;; attending a lycee; vacationing in Brittany in 1939 and staying there because her father was in danger; returning to Paris in the summer of 1940; her father being denounced in 1942; her attempts to get her father released; her father’s deportation to Drancy then Auschwitz; her father’s false ID papers with the name “Denise Dufour”; staying in a hotel with her mother in Juvisy for two years; her job at a boarding school; going to farms to get food and hitchhiking with German soldiers; liberation and returning to Paris; how her father’s stock certificates worthless after Russians took over Romania; trying to emigrate; going to the United States in May 1950 and settling in California; getting married in 1955; living in New York, NY and Washington, DC; and her career as a psychotherapist.

Brenda Senders, born in 1925 in Sarny, Poland (now in Ukraine), describes her life before the war; attending Hebrew school; the Soviet occupation; the German invasion in 1941; going to live in the ghetto in Sarny; going into hiding and staying in her uncle’s barn with 11 other people; an uprising in the ghetto led by Jewish youths; returning to town and joining her family during a deportation; being taken to a camp in a valley; escaping the camp with her sister and a friend; receiving help from a local woman; hiding in the woods with a group of people; joining the partisans after finding someone she trusted to look after her sister; the growth of the partisan group; her activities with the partisans; the end of the war and reuniting with her sister and uncle; immigrating to the United States in 1952; getting married and having three children; and the book she has with pictures of people from her town who perished in the war.

Leon Senders (Lazar Sederovich), born in March 19, 1923 in Vilna, Poland (now Vilnius, Lithuania), describes his father, who was a socialist and bid on oven-building jobs for Russian Army in 1940; the bombing of Vilna in June-December 1941; traveling with his friends to Russia; traveling to Smolensk, then to Penza, where a refugee committee gave them food; living on a collective farm, doing tractor repair work; applying to Lithuanian Division of the Russian Army; going to Balakhna in the Gorky Region of Russia; the difficult living conditions; attending school in Moscow, Russia from 1943 to 1944 and learning to build radio stations and relay messages; parachuting into Lithuania in October 1944 and helping the partisan group led by “Jurgis” (Heinrich Zimman or Henrikas Zimanas-Jurgis), who was a Jewish communist; sending radio messages to Moscow, giving them the German troop movements; going deeper to Siauliai, Lithuania and fighting Germans; going to Lazdijai, Lithuania and sending coded messages; hitching a ride to Kashudar and being arrested then released; staying for five days in a hospital in Vilna; how his entire family except his sister was killed in Ponar; staying in displaced persons camps in Poland, Prague (Czech Republic), and Vienna (Austria); going to Salzburg, Austria; getting married; crossing over the Alps to join his surviving sister in Milan, Italy; learning typewriter mechanics at an ORT school; and going to Washington, DC, where his wife’s relatives lived.

Mike Shmeltz, born on May 15, 1924 in Goworowo, Poland, describes the German invasion in September 1939; the burning of their town and fleeing with his family to Zambrow then Bialystok, Poland; being sent to Siberia by the Russians; the journey on a cattle train for eight days; the German attack of Russia in June 1941 and going to Kyrgyzstan, where he tilled the land, carried water, and endured extremely cold winters; being given permission by the camp director to leave in 1945; crossing Russia to Baranovichi, Belarus; waiting a year for permission from the Russian government to leave; going in 1946 to Szczecin, Poland, where he found his sister and her husband; going to a Hashomer Hatzair kibbutz and contacting Bricha; getting married; going to Czechoslovakia and Austria; living in the Schteia displaced persons camp and the terrible conditions there; going to Kassel, Germany, where he worked as a truck driver from 1947 to 1949; living in Israel from 1949 to 1959; living in Montreal with his wife and daughter from 1959 to 1964; and immigrating to the United States in 1964.

Monique Simon (née Gautschoux), born on November 9, 1932 in Mulhouse, France, describes her father entering the French Army in September 1939; her family’s move to Bourbonne-les-Bains to a relatives’ house; having gas masks and being taught to be scared by her mother; going to Plombières-les-Bains in early 1940 and attending school; fleeing in late 1940 for Crest after her sister disclosed that they were Jewish; living with mother’s sister in early 1941 and her father locating them; her father finding a place for them with a non-Jewish family, the Lutrands, through the Red Cross; her father getting identity cards marked “Juif”; being hidden by a priest along with her sister, while her parents hid in a post office; her father’s arrest and release; living with her sister in the home of a peasant family, the Oliviers in 1942; doing farm work and not attending school; going with her sister to her aunt’s house in February 1944; the bombardment of the village by American troops and staying in a bomb shelter for weeks; the Germans arriving and taking hostages, radios, and bicycles; the Lutrands taking them to the village of Livron (Livron-sur-Drôme); returning to Crest when the Germans arrived; staying in a bomb shelter as the Americans and Germans fought for the village; returning with her family to Mulhouse in early 1945; attending high school and spending the summer in Zurich, Switzerland; attending physical therapy school in Paris for three years; visiting her sister in Israel in 1955 and meeting her husband, Benjamin Simon; going to the United States in 1958; settling in Washington, DC; and the birth of her daughter in 1960.

Regina Spiegel (née Gutman), born in Radom, Poland in 1926, describes her childhood; her three sisters and two brothers; the German invasion in September 1939 and being the only survivor from her immediate family; being at the mercy of the Germans; having to move to a small apartment and give up their valuables; the restrictions placed on Jews; the creation of the ghetto in 1940; life in the ghetto and bribing a guard to escape; living with her sister in Pionki, Poland; bringing other Jews into the village; working in a labor camp; the camp allowing her sister to bring in her baby boy; the deportations to Treblinka; the denouncement of her sister and confronting the woman responsible after the war; the closing of Pionki labor camp and being deported to Auschwitz; conditions during the journey; her experiences when she arrived in the camp; being selected to work in a munitions factory at Bergen-Belsen; the bombing of their train and being hit by shrapnel; the importance of sharing Holocaust experiences; returning to Poland after the war; and her reflections on the Holocaust.

Hilda Thieberger (née Hildegarde Goldberger), born on February 26, 1913 in Teschen, Silesia (Cieszyn, Poland), describes how the town was half Czech and half Polish; having a Czech passport; getting married to Irving Thieberger on November 11, 1935; having a daughter in February 1937 in Bielsko, Poland; the plundering of Jewish stores in the fall of 1937; going with her child to her sister-in-law in Zabjek, Poland (possibly Zabrzeg); the German invasion and her husband’s imprisonment for three months; smuggling themselves into the Auschwitz (Oswiecim) ghetto and wearing armbands with star; Jews being forced to build a camp in June 1940; her husband being sent to Belice work camp in 1941; going to the Sosnowice ghetto; going to the Belice work camp in 1941 and living with her husband in an attic; bribing guards with food and whiskey; witnessing hangings in the street; having to wear the yellow star; working for a year as a cook and seamstress for the SS; her husband going to Gleiwitz-Blechhammer; joining her husband in Bystra in December 1943; hiding in a hole in a basement in the summer of 1944 and getting false ID papers; the Allies approaching and hearing Auschwitz inmates marching in January 1945; their house being bombed on February 10, 1945 and seeing Russian soldiers; renting an apartment in May 1945; having a second child in December 1945; going to Ostrow, Czechoslovakia on false papers in August 1946; going to Hof, Germany in October 1946 and the difficult conditions in the camp; going to Landau, Germany and staying in the displaced persons camp for four years; going to the United States and settling in Washington, DC; living on a chicken farm in Pennsylvania for five years; returning to Washington, DC, where her husband did metal artwork for the Smithsonian Institution; and her husband making the menorah for the White House.

Anna Weiss (née Loewi), born on January 26, 1911 in Gratz, Austria, describes attending medical school in Munich, Germany in 1932; returning after seeing swastikas on the street; attending medical school in Vienna, Austria for two years; going to Prague, Czech Republic in 1936; her father, Otto Loewi, receiving the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1936; getting married to Ulrich Weiss on May 23, 1937; living in Aussig on Elbe (Ustí nad Labem, Czech Republic) and having a child; seeing the Nazis marching and their attempts to emigrate; going with her child to Stara-Boleslav, Czech Republic and hiding in a furniture van to get to Prague; getting visas to Belgium; meeting her father in Brussels, Belgium in March 1939; going to Argenteuil, France; seeing planes and shooting; going to Clermont-Ferrand then to Vert-au-Laye; renting a room on a farm; going to Lyon, France to the Spanish, Portuguese, and American consulates; going to Marseille, France in March 1941 and staying in an inn with Spanish soldiers; persuading HIAS to give her money for tickets; sailing with 250 people, including artists and scientists; docking in Martinique and staying in an internment camp for one month; sailing to the Dominican Republic then New York, NY; arriving in New York on June 2, 1941; getting a job to pay off the debt of her father’s trip; going to Washington, DC in 1957; and working at the National Institutes of Health with her husband.

Ulrich Weiss, born on June 24, 1908 in Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), describes earning his Ph.D. in chemistry in 1930; working for a pharmaceutical company; getting married to Anna Loewi in May 1937; his wife and child going to Stara-Boleslav, Czech Republic then to Prague; going to Belgium in March 31, 1939; his company setting up an office in Paris, France in July 1939; his wife and child living in Argenteuil, France and experiencing antisemitism; the German approach in June 1940 and fleeing to Clermont-Ferrand; staying in a shelter with Belgian refugees; going to a farmhouse in Marat and helping with the harvest; his wife going to Lyon, France and getting American visas; going to Marseille, France in March 1941 and staying in an inn with Spanish soldiers; sailing with refugees, including Andre Breton, Victor Serge, and Anne Seghers; docking in Martinique and staying in an internment camp for one month; sailing to the Dominican Republic then New York, NY; working at a pharmaceutical company; going to Washington, DC in 1957; and working at the National Institutes of Health with his wife.

Bernhard Witkop, born on May 9, 1917 in Freiburg, Germany, describes being raised by a Catholic father and Jewish mother; being baptized as a Catholic; his mother’s move to Bavaria in 1935 and his parents’ divorce in 1936; living with a cousin; being considered a mischlinge by the German government and not being allowed to attend university; his mother being forced out of the country and winding up in Holland; working on his Ph.D. in Munch, Germany in 1939; being rejected for an American visa in 1940; moving in 1942 to Freising as conditions worsened in Munich; living in a farmhouse and doing lab work in a technical high school; the destruction of his records in Munich during the bombardment; not registering with the government; Professor Heinrich Wieland getting him an identity card to show he was an employee at a pharmaceutical company on the Rhine; being liberated by Americans in May 1945; getting married and contacting his mother in Holland; becoming a university professor in 1946; how his friend, Hans Heiman, arranged a position for him at Harvard; sailing on the Ernie Pyle from an UNRRA camp in Bremen, Germany to New York, NY; his Mellon fellowship at Harvard from 1947 to 1950; being a visiting professor in Japan; and how he considers himself a devout agnostic.

Learn about over 1,000 camps and ghettos in Volume I and II of this encyclopedia, which are available as a free PDF download. This reference provides text, photographs, charts, maps, and extensive indexes.